


in memoriam

by hoverbun



Series: what happens after death [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Family Member Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 21:14:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13772691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoverbun/pseuds/hoverbun
Summary: No soul is remembered as it must be, as no love for death comes from the shadow of mourning.





	in memoriam

Elesia is the smallest body to be taken out of the almshouse and into the cart of dead.

Her frail hand hangs in her father’s own grasp as two men that Karthus has come to know as Karlov and Frederick carry her. They carefully lay her atop the many dead, her malnourished legs lowered against the wood cart and her ankles dangle over the ledge. She lays beside Anya, an older woman without children, and in the moment between her eyes being slipped shut by the shaking hand of his silent father and the bracelet on her limp hand being slipped off by that same hand - Karthus watches her face, the sullen cheeks and the thin hair that spills from her scarf.

Her cowl is clean. He had assisted two younger children the day prior with laundry, and Elesia had asked her brother to clean the shawl she enjoys wrapping her hair in. It is pink - a rare colour to see in the depths of lower Noxus. 

Karthus remembers their father’s joy to give it to her on the first birthday after Dalasia’s passing - wrapped in a thick red hair ribbon, a shawl that even Karthus hadn’t a clue where he came into its possession. Perhaps his father had stolen it, right off the head of a noblewoman in the Ivory Ward. Perhaps he had it crafted just for Elesia, scraping together every bit of coin that he could just to cure the broken heart of his final daughter when split from her second half, the sister she shared her mother’s warmth with.

The ribbon was meant to be Dalasia’s. It is a shame she passed before her birthday, but perhaps it was fair, and even a touch bitterly ironic, that the ribbon could be the wrapping decoration for the roll of pink cloth. Elesia had said it reminded her of strawberries, and wore it with elegance and pride until the older ladies told her it was time to wash it.

The memory clouds Karthus’ mind and eyes. He is not aware that Karlov asks that he and his father step back from the cart until his father is pulling his son back, the bracelet of Elesia’s clutched in his hand.

A woman steps to his father. Her name is Diane - she lived with Anya. She takes him into his arms, and Karthus hears her speak his name and run her hand through his hair. His father has lain three pieces of his heart into the carts of the tallymen, and he crumbles into her arms.

Karthus watches the final body be brought to the cart - a young child, perhaps no older than four. But even that is difficult for Karthus to discern, for even the living find themselves starved and empty in the lower dwellings of Noxus. They shamble forth like the corpses they lay for the clean tallymen of the Kindred, gloved hands that lift the cold bodies left behind from the great hunts of Freya and Wolyo. The living mourn in the house of sickness, and Karthus can hear the wails of mothers parted from their children and friends losing their heartlights in the distance of his thoughts. Like a clouded fog that holds him free of the dawn’s horror, comforted and numb.

The body that lays in the cart belonged to his sister. He remembers how she smiled to him the night before, reaching from the second bed of their singular room for her beloved shawl in her brother’s hands. Had she known that her life would come to an end in the silence of night? Was the Lamb training its arrow upon her out of the corner of every eye, and she wished to be lain to the earth as she was in life?

His father’s hand comes upon Karthus’ shoulder - he turns him away from the cart, and they walk with the other woman that Karthus has already begun to forget toward the door of the almshouse. His father clutches the bracelet to his chest, head bowed.

“Was that hers?” that woman asks.

“Yes,” his father says, and Karthus cannot hear them - distant, underwater. “I will - I am going to put it in the box, with Dali, Agri, a-and Evangeline’s…”

“She loved her headscarf more,” Karthus then says, and he knows his father looks at him, even as he does not return that. “You should have left that with her. She cared far more for the headscarf you gifted her when she was sixteen.”

“The bracelet was from your mother,” his father says, the trace of that exasperated bite that he holds for his son’s ethereal horror in the wake of death lingering on his words, “before you - before you were born, Karthus. You have one too. You will wear it to Elly’s memorial.”

“Such a memento seems to be that we bury Mother for the third time,” Karthus says, and his father strikes him. 

The woman pulls him back with a harsh _Varin!_ as tears well in the swollen eyes of his father. She guides him inside, and over her shoulder she speaks - “Young man - give your father time before you start up with that act of yours.”

Karthus’ face stings with the memory of his father’s swipe. More fingers than palm - his hand swept across his skin with the dignity of a disgraced animal, and his nails scratched him enough to make pale skin flush with a curved streak of red. It will not last. Karthus’ hand touches the warm skin, and stops walking once his father has entered the building once more. Instead, he turns around, and walks himself toward the cart that Frederick sits atop, drawn by horse.

The cart moves. Karthus does not wave for the man’s attention, for he knows he is there. He walks at his sister’s side, holding her hand.


End file.
